This paper discusses some changes in the economic ‘landscape’ (policy cultures, institutions, infrastructures, regulations, and economic processes) within which the European Framework Programmes are formed and implemented. The main changes are: the domestic reform agenda of liberalisation,...

International performance comparisons are very attractive to policy-makers, with good reason. In the absence of any practical criteria for judging optimal performance, cross-country comparisons offer one of the few ways in which policy-makers can assess performance outcomes of policy measures...